The Annual Christmas Wishlists

(As always, I do not correct spelling errors.  I just type what is written)

Brooklin

• Geek Shirt
• Sweaters
• Long sleeve under armor (for running)
• Pocket knife
• Earings
• Books
• Sweat pants for running
• Books A Million - pretty much anything in there
• That one Shakespearean Star Wars book we saw, that was awesome.
• Acceptance letter to college

Caleb

1. Books      1b. Star Wars Books 
2. PS3
3. Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix
4. Kingdom Hearts Manga
5. Pants
6. Halo (or Xbox game for 4 people)
7. 2 more Xbox controllers
8. Headphones
9. A movie
10. Legos (A BIG one)
11. Angry Birds Star Wars II (for iPad)
12. A bean chair or circle chair
13. A trip to the gun range
14. Foozball table for the basement
15. Horse Shoes (the game)
16. Star Wars posters
17. Personal Rope
18. Bow Ties and Regular Ties
19. An under armor shirt
20. Mormon Ads
21. Lifeproof case

London

1. contacts
2. new iPod case
3. makeup
4. gun
5. pocket knife
6. kindle fire
7. The Elite (book)
8. Books
9. colored contacts
10. clothes
11. Catching Fire movie (if it's out)
12. Kingdom Hearts
13. Beehive necklace
14. Facebook
15. Converse
16. Head Phones (not)
17. Harry Potter/Hunger Games/Star Wars T-Shirts
18. Springy Circle Chair!!!!!
19. Ping Pong Table
20. BACON
21. earings

Isaiah

1. Kingdom Hearts books
2. Laptop
3. Legos
4. 3-D puzzle
5. Boxing gloves
6. Boxing gloves pen
7. Chello
8. Arctect set
9. slatwater taffy
10. Nook
11. Real tool set with would and nales
12. New knife
13. Minney TV
14. enlarged candey
15. Head phones
16. PS3
17. Bow and arowe
18. Gun
19. Hunters cetifacasho class
20. pagamas
21. pantes
22. Halo
23. Kirbey game
24. Cross bow
25. ipad
26. Art kit
27. skech book
28. Yarn
29. New snokol geer
30. shoes
31. cook book
32. iphone
33. desk
34. Air hokey
35. phos ball
36. ping pong

Kalia

     Although she can't talk very well yet to tell us what she wants, I am pretty sure anything with Bubble Guppies, Minions (Despicable Me), or Dora the Explorer on it would do.  She also loves candy, cheese, grapes, seaweed, cookies, crackers, and fruit snacks.  She really likes playing with her baby-sized legos and wooden blocks too.  

Merry Christmas 2010

Pictures from Santa Day!  This year for our secret service, we took the kids to the church at 10am on Christmas Eve and we cleaned it for two hours.  While we were gone, Santa stopped by and dropped off some presents!  (If you don't know about our Christmas Tradition of secret service, you can visit this post... and scroll down to where it talks about Christmas).  Darwin had to work all day on Christmas (from 6am to 9pm) so we did our service a little earlier in the day on Christmas eve.


Santa left presents all over the living room, since this year we put the trees up on the plant shelf.  (our living room is kind of tiny).  It was like a little treasure hunt to find them all.

We had two tiny trees this year and we put them up on the plant shelf along with all the snowmen.

Here is a present to London from "a barrel of monkeys"!

More loot

Caleb and his present from "dasher"

Isaiah got his very own Lego set!  He was super excited and spent the bulk of the evening putting it together all by himself! 

This is the only present I asked for... It is a wireless remote for my camera and it is awesome!

He really does enjoy posing for pictures. =)

London got her very own Lego set too.

Brooklin got a necklace from the r house couture.  It says "FAIL" on it and has a little whale charm.  She saw it and fell in love with it!  It is about Jonah and the whale...and listening to God when he tells you to do something.  If you don't want to fail...don't run away like Jonah did!

I surprised Darwin this year.  I'm not sure I've ever done that before!  (Well...except for the first year we were married.  We went to the mall and he tried on a bunch of suits, found one that fit and we bought it for him for Christmas.  On Christmas morning, he opened all his presents and the suit wasn't one of the presents.  I felt like we spent too much money, and I had taken the suit back to the store and didn't tell him...mostly because I didn't know how...but I didn't want to be in debt and we bought the suit with a credit card, so I just took it back.  I felt really bad, but I think he forgave me pretty quickly).  Anyway...I got him an iPhone 4 and was able to keep it a secret from him!  I always get so excited that I tell him what I got him...and it was so hard not to tell him, but so fun to see his face when he opened it!

This is Isaiah's face when he realized that Santa brought our family a red Wii!  He couldn't believe it!

...neither could Brooklin.  She is the one who got to open it!

and London started doing a happy dance right on the couch!

Caleb was super excited too!  He has wanted a Wii forever!

Traditional Christmas morning breakfast of strawberry waffles with whipped cream and strawberry syrup.

Caleb stuck his elbow in his whip cream...  hahaha!

mmm, mmm, mmm!

Fun with 6 rolls of TP!

I love April Fool's Day.

I get to make mischief...

...the fun kind. =)

Last night, I did a little cupboard/drawer switch-a-roo in the kitchen.  I switched the hand towels and the utensils...the cups and the bowls...the pots and pans with the cereal and stuff...the lunch bag drawer with the measuring cups.  I also used yellow food coloring to tint the milk to look like orange juice.  Then I went downstairs and drew eyes and flowers and smiley faces on the girls' glasses with a dry erase marker.

They all loved it!

They all get their own breakfast in the morning (while I am making their lunches) and they usually have oatmeal (the flavored kind in packets).  Normally, we keep a container on the table full of  utensils...but I made sure to empty that back into the (wrong) drawer and I emptied the dishwasher so they would have to look in the drawer to find a spoon...and when they opened the drawer, there were towels.  =)  I switched the cereal with the pots and pans...and when they went to find a bowl, they only found cups.  We bought the Costco milk last time we needed some (i really hate the new square containers they have) so we keep the milk in a pitcher...which made great cover for the "orange juice" milk.  Isaiah started opening every drawer and cupboard trying to see if I had done the whole kitchen. =)

This afternoon I decided to toilet paper the kids' bedrooms.

I only used three rolls in each room, but it was fun.  No one tp's around here, because it rains too much...and wet toilet paper is really not very fun to clean up..  I'm waiting for them to get home right now so I can watch them open their bedroom doors. =)

Here are the photos of my beautiful mess!

...and I do not claim responsibility for the mess that was there before I started my mischief...

...I'm not their maid...

...and between me being constantly angry about it or them just living with stuff piled on their floors, beds, and dressers (which doesn't seem to bother them in the least)...

...I'll take vacuumed once a week and just let them live in it.

It isn't worth the angry nagging and yelling that could go on.

(and has at some point).

Shamrock Shenanigans

 Calvin O'Russell made it to the Jensen house!  The kids were so cute last night...it was like they were waiting for Santa Clause to come!  hehe!  They all woke up bright and early too...just like Christmas morning, well not really Christmas morning...because we do all the opening of gifts on Christmas Eve...but you get the picture, ya? They were all ready for school by 7am!  Most mornings, they aren't even up by 7am!  They noticed all the mischief that our little leprechaun left for them to find...and some that I didn't know they would attribute to him. =)



First of all, he took a whiteboard marker and wrote Happy St. Patrick's Day on their bathroom mirror and drew some shamrocks.

Then as they came up the stairs, they noticed something was off...the rug and coat tree that are usually at the top of the stairs, were moved over in front of the door.  There were green shirts flung about...and he dressed one of the snowman in a green shirt!  He also moved the snowman to the other side of the stairs!  He moved the fake ficus to the other side of the room and he cleaned the gerbil cages and sorted the baby boys out of the tank and into the cage with Ron (their dad)!  (I didn't think they would think he did this, but they were so amazed at how three of the baby gerbils were now in the other cage...they gave him credit!)

He left some interesting things for their lunches today too!  He left them Green Beans in little fruit cups, green fruit by the foot, and some green packaged Pringles pizza sticks, and drew shamrocks on their lunch sacks.  He also left apple juice (in green juice boxes) and some green pear sauce (like applesauce, but it was green).  We also found key lime pie yogurt in the fridge for breakfast!

He left each us a gift at the table.  Darwin got a Planet 51 dvd (little green men?  haha!), I got a Princess and the Frog movie (more green characters), Brooklin got a green Laffy Taffy chapstick, Caleb got one of those "bed-of-nails" toys...everyone always puts their hands or face in them and they make a relief map type of thing...London got a Tinkerbell toy, and Isaiah got a green book.  He also left us each a button with a snappy St. Patrick's Day catch phrase and each of the kids received a golden dollar!

This is so much fun!  I love this family tradition that helps us remember my Grandpa Russell and lets us celebrate a small piece of our heritage.

April Fool's Fun

We love April Fool's Day around here. I had class until late last night, so the only fun thing I did this morning was I wore all my clothes inside out (which Brooklin thought was a fabulous idea...and wore hers like that for the entire day) and I wrote all their names backwards on their lunch sacks, and gave them peanut butter and nutella sandwiches for lunch. They knew that the nutella sandwiches were for fun, because I normally do not share my nutella.

After the kids went to school, I went to work setting up pranks! First, I printed off these two signs (from FamilyFun.com) and posted them on the kids' doors.

Next, I blew up four balloons and didn't tie them shut. I carefully twisted the ends of two together, and then shut the ends in the door of their rooms, so that when the door was opened, they would fly around the room and make noise and startle the door opener. After that, I tore off a lenght of 4 squares of toilet paper and used a sharpie to write "Who goes there?!" on it. Then I floated it in the kids toilet, so the first person to use it would get a little suprise! Funny enough, London was the first one in there, and it did startle her, and she had to go bad, so she ended up having to change her clothes! oops! Caleb read the rat sign, and then opened his door and jumped in the air when the balloons started flying around the room. He blew them up again and set them up in the garage door, so when Brooklin got home and went to put her shoes away, she would get a suprise...and she did! She almost broke out her mad ninja skills on the door! So funny!

For dinner this evening, they were all expecting something fishy with their food...but we just had regular old sloppy joes. They were kind of disappointed, until I announced that for dessert we would be having fish sticks and peas. The "fish sticks" were really authentic looking, but the "peas" were not very fooling. I even pulled the "fish sticks" out of the oven to make it look more real. They are also from the FamilyFun.com website. They are made out of those sugar wafer cookies (the pink, tan, and brown waffle cookies) covered in peanut butter and then covered with crushed corn flakes. It was messy, but really fun. We had some of Caleb's friends over...and they were really leary of our dessert fish sticks. We had to convince them that it was really good.

Calvin O'Russell visits the Jensens!

Each year, we have a special leprechaun visit our house on March 17th. His name is Calvin O'Russell, and he likes to play tricks on our family. This year, he left us a treat for breakfast...Lucky Charms (which we don't usually buy, because of the marshmallows), a green table cloth, and he turned our silverware green. He left the kids each a new green shirt and hat (or hair) and a green toy. He left shamrock stickers in with the lunch sacks, along with an array of green food for their lunches. We also noticed he left us a card with his picture on it.

I always loved going to my mother's parents house on St. Patrick's Day and eating corned beef and cabbage and Irish soda bread. It was a special holiday, since I didn't know anyone else that really celebrated St. Patrick's Day, other than just wearing green. My grandfather (Calvin George Harold Russell)passed away in Dec. 1998, and the tradition kind of ended. I wanted to share the fun of St. Patrick's Day with my family, so in 2001, I "invented" our special leprechaun (Calvin O'Russell)to keep my grandpa's spirit alive for my children. I have had a lot of fun with it, and although St. Patrick's Day isn't really about leprechauns and gold...to me it is about family and ancestory and keeping our distant relatives in our lives. They know who he was, and we get to remember him today.